If it were up to me, I’d have a garden that produced more strawberries, peaches, pears, oranges, and other delicious, sweet fruits, than anything else. But of course that’s not the way nature works. Citrus won’t grow at all where I live, and if I want to eat anything fresh in the early spring and late fall, I have to expand my selection. Lettuce and other greens are a great choice for early-spring eating, and winter squash are an example of late-fall plants. Even if spinach, cabbage, and collards aren”t my favorite vegetables (and, actually, I like collards quite a lot), I try to find ways to eat them because that’s clearly what an animal living in my neck of the woods should be eating at this time of year, if that’s what’ll grow.

Issa hasn’t been receptive to this argument. She says, “If we’re going to eat exclusively from the garden, then I’ll eat whatever comes from it, and like it, but as long as we’re eating from the grocery store, I don’t want to eat collards.” The problem has been that there’s no way our garden can produce all of the produce we want to eat. So this weekend, we made a compromise: we won’t eat exclusively from the garden, and we won’t even go so far as to eat exclusively local, but we will eat only in-season.

I’ll boil her up a bowl of collards and see if she means it.